“I really felt like I had two full-time jobs during the season,” said Tiffany Monroe, a
Philadelphia Eagles cheerleader
from 2006 to 2014, who now works as a physical education teacher in Somers Point, N.J. “And our season never really ended. We got a little bit of a break in February.”

Despite the demands of cheerleading, NFL teams stress that it is not a full-time job. In fact, cheerleaders are often required to have other jobs or be students in college. (“Yes, a mother is considered a full-time job!”
one team notes
in its list of cheerleader requirements.)

The pay is minimal.

NFL teams are super secretive about how much cheerleaders get paid. We reached out to the New England Patriots, Philadelphia Eagles, and several other teams, and all either didn’t respond or refused to give any details about cheerleader wages.

— Pats Cheerleaders (@PatsCheer)

If a team states anything publicly about the issue, it’s generally something vague and unhelpful like what’s on the
Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders
site: “There is a pay schedule for rehearsals, home football games, promo appearances shows.”

Their reluctance to discuss the issue could be because they’re scared of being sued. In recent years, a number of lawsuits have been filed alleging that teams broke the law by paying sub-minimum-wages to cheerleaders. (The results of these suits have varied, with one NFL team agreeing to a
$1.25 million settlement
with former cheerleaders, one claim
thrown out of court
, and one team, the
Buffalo Bills
, dropping its cheerleaders entirely.)

Or it could be that teams are keeping quiet about cheerleader pay because the wages are so embarrassingly low.

Similar to wise buying decisions, exiting certain underperformers at the right time helps maximize portfolio returns. Selling off losers can be difficult, but if both the share price and estimates are falling, it could be time to get rid of the security before more losses hit your portfolio.

One such stock that you may want to consider dropping is
Aptose Biosciences Inc.
APTO, which has witnessed a significant price decline in the past four weeks, and it has seen negative earnings estimate revisions for the current quarter and the current year. A Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell) further confirms weakness in APTO.

Aptose Biosciences Inc.

A key reason for this move has been the negative trend in earnings estimate revisions. For the full year, we have seen one estimate moving down in the past 30 days, compared with no upward revisions. This trend has caused the consensus estimate to trend lower, going from a loss of 72 cents a share a month ago to its current level of a loss of 88 cents.

Also, for the current quarter, Aptose Biosciences has seen one downward estimate revisions versus no revisions in the opposite direction, dragging the consensus estimate down to a loss of 20 cents a share from a loss of 17 cents over the past 30 days.

The stock also has seen some pretty dismal trading lately, as the share price has dropped 19.2% in the past month.

So it may not be a good decision to keep this stock in your portfolio anymore, at least if you don’t have a long time horizon to wait.

If you are still interested in the Medical - Biomedical and Genetics industry, you may instead consider a better-ranked stock - Illumina, Inc. ILMN. The stock currently holds a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) and may be a better selection at this time. You can see
the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here
.

the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here

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